Mark Kelly Calls Out The ‘Grossly Insufficient’ Number Of Healthcare Providers Serving U.S. Military

22 hours ago

During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) discussed concerns over adequate health treatment for returning service members.

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Transcript

00:00Senator Kelly. Thank you Mr. Chairman. General Friedrichs, good morning and

00:09thank you all all of you for being here today. General Friedrichs, in a recent

00:14war game brief to Congress in November of 2024, a hypothetical conflict in the

00:21Indo-Pacific resulted in 3,000 U.S. casualties in three weeks and 10,000

00:26across the entire conflict, and I'm kind of following up on Senator Budd's line of

00:32questioning here. These numbers are higher than anything we've seen since

00:36the Korean War, and as severely injured service members transition through the

00:42care system and make their way back to the United States for treatment, I'm

00:47concerned that the number of DOD providers capable of handling trauma

00:52will be grossly insufficient. So given that, we're going to need to surge

00:57capacity, potentially found in the U.S. hospital system and VA hospitals, so

01:05meaning civilian hospitals, VA hospitals. What concerns do you have with relying

01:10on U.S. civilian and VA hospitals to provide this trauma care to our service

01:17members? Thank you very much, Senator Kelly, and I'd start by saying even

01:22before we get patients back to the United States, in the past we've relied

01:27on our allies and partners to help care for our casualties, and I am deeply

01:32concerned if we sever or degrade those relationships, we will need to rewrite

01:38our plans and the demand on the U.S. health care system will be even greater.

01:41To your point about the U.S. health care system, the integrated CONUS medical

01:45operations plan that we updated in 1998 and then didn't look at until 2020 is

01:53the plan that describes how we will surge capacity, but a key part of that

01:58gets back to some of the discussions we've had earlier. There have to be

02:02doctors and nurses and pharmacists and all the other staff to do that, and I

02:06implore that we continue to look at the pipelines that produce those medics as

02:10well as the facilities in which they work. We had briefly chatted about the

02:16opportunity for a medical equivalent to the civilian reserve air flight that

02:21that we use to ensure access to civilian aircraft when needed. I believe we need

02:27some similar construct in the health care system where we partner with

02:30industry and recognize that during surge moments there's a plan and there's money

02:36available for us to be able to leverage their staff and their facilities.

02:40Is there a plan?

02:42There is a plan. We wrote the first version of that before I retired and

02:46they are working on an update to that, but it would benefit from additional

02:50congressional oversight to ensure that it's on track and it does not get

02:54diverted by bureaucratic buffoonery.

02:55Are there current efforts in the relationship building with these hospitals?

03:01The Defense Health Agency is tasked to have that outreach, and as I've met with

03:06hospital CEOs and system owners, there's certainly an opportunity to do more in

03:11that space. We must view the health care industry the same way we view the

03:16aviation industry or the missile producing industry as our partners. We

03:20cannot take care of America's casualties without those partners.

03:24Can you talk to the value in the two Navy hospital ships? I don't know if

03:29anybody here is prepared to talk about because I think I think there's enough

03:33effort underway to replace those. There's also the training ships for the state

03:42maritime academies that I think also could serve a role. I visited one at the

03:49Philly shipyard a few weeks ago, had an operating room on board. Is that part of

03:56the system as you envision it? Yes, absolutely. The hospital ships are

04:01integral to our plans for a large-scale combat operation, and the two ships we

04:07have are some of the oldest ships afloat. They have to be replaced. I think there's

04:13a plan to replace them now. Can you speak to how that is going if you know?

04:19So I pushed incredibly hard for that plan as the Joint Staff Surgeon against

04:24intense opposition that we should spend the money in other places. I would defer

04:29to the Navy for the latest update on it because they can give you the most

04:32current plan, but my understanding is that we're still years away from having

04:36the replacement ships available. So we'll have to extend the current ships and I

04:40believe the last update I received, which is dated, was through 2035. But we do need

04:47that additional replacement funding to replace those aged ships. All right, thank

04:53you and thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mark Kelly Calls Out The ‘Grossly Insufficient’ Number Of Healthcare Providers Serving U.S. Military

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